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St. Regis Bal Harbour – The Room

The hotel room is truly the environment that matters when you really want to be inside from the world. The room at the St. Regis Bal Harbour met nearly all my needs.  Access to ice and a coffee maker without staff assistance would have been better.

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Room 1110 at St. Regis Bal Harbour is a Grand Luxe Ocean View Guest Room. This is the same 650 square feet design as Deluxe Ocean View Guest Room on lower floors 4-7. The hotel has 24 floors.

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Angular walls in corridor on Floor 11 at St. Regis Bal Harbour.

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Morning paper.

The entry hall to Room 1110 has a wall of fish and a closet with ironing board.

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The Room Entry Hall ceiling is similar pattern to lobby ceiling shown in my article St. Regis Bal Harbour – The Hotel.

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View from entry hall to patio.

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Shower, tub and sink are on left side of hallway with two sliding doors. Opposite wall has toilet and changing room closet with full length mirrors.

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Unique toilet paper spare roll holder.

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Toilet is a separate room with its own sink across the hall from shower and bath in separate room. I spy a toilet telephone.

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Changing room closet is located next to toilet with two full length mirrors and full size drawers. I never closed any of the four sliding doors for the rooms during my stay. The tub across the hall is reflected in the mirror of the changing room.

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St. Regis Bal Harbour tub.

My wife describing the bathtub to me down to the rack in the middle with the sponge while she was in California on the phone kind of freaked me out that she had that kind of detail in her head. We stayed in St. Regis San Francisco three weeks before. She remembered the similar bathtub design well.

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Wall mirror beside the bathtub allows TV viewing while soaking.

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Bathroom TV in mirror.

The TV is not positioned so well for viewing when using the sink since you have to turn your head 90 degrees left.

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Sink vanity in bathroom.

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Bathroom mirror.

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Shower and Remede bath products.

Bedroom

The Grande Luxe bedroom offers a bed, couch, cushion chair, desk with chair, minibar and TV with many HDTV stations.

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Bed is high quality with comfortable pillows and linens.

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Mirror design above bed offers similar effect as hall of mirrors in lobby with reflections on different textures in space.

Here by the Sea and Sand anecdote

The first morning I woke up and opened the curtains for sunrise. The blinds and sheers open and close by bedside control panel. I wanted to lay in bed and listen to the surf. I opened the patio doors wide and lay back in bed. The sea was not visible from the angle of the bed with my head on the pillows. I flipped the pillows to the foot of the bed and lay there listening to the sounds.

The sound reminded me of my neighbor running the vacuum. Then I realized it was a garbage truck outside the hotel. That sound only lasted a couple of minutes.

When I placed my head on the pillow and tried to drift off in the daze of morning sleepiness I heard a pulsating beat as loud as the surf rising up from the pillow pressed against my ear. The more I tried to listen to the surf, the more the music beat drummed in my head.

After a few minutes I went to investigate the source of rhythm. At 7am the speakers at the Tranquility Pool were playing a beat aimed from the plants on the beach side of the pool to the hotel building.

The pool sounds keep new age tranquility alive at the pool during the day by obscuring sounds from the public pedestrian and bicycle traffic 50 feet away on the Bal Harbour Beach Path. The pool tunes also drown out the sound of the morning surf for guests sitting above the Atlantic Ocean in the St. Regis Resort with their patio doors open in the morning.

In all fairness to my first intranquil morning, on the second morning there was no music playing from the pool at 7:30am. Is Friday a quiet day?

Only the garbage trucks and some traffic noise from Collins Avenue briefly drowned out the sounds of the sea and birds that morning.

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Couch and room controls electronic panel on bed dresser.

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TV service and large number of channels and music is good feature. I just want to know why the TV blasted out several Spanish language channels at twice the volume of the other hundred channels?

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Minibar in cabinet is not electronic and stocked selection in the refrigerator left plenty of space  for personal storage.

Evening turn down service brings ice, two bottles of water and two chocolates.

Internet is complimentary at the hotel once you log in with name and room number.

Beach Upon Arrival

The room itself has privacy as long as someone on the adjacent deck is not in the corner of their balcony looking into your room. Therefore, the placement of a table and chairs in the corner of the balcony patio.

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Two lounge chairs and table provide a good view. The closer your room is to the front, the more beachfront seen from your room patio.

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Southeast facing beach and pool lost direct sun early in the short days of December.

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Sunrise.

The patio balconies at 210 square feet are large enough for privacy as long as you don’t venture out to the edge.

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Courtyard at St. Regis Bal Harbour.

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Patio view of Tranquility Pool (adults pool) at St. Regis Bal Harbour

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Lounge chair view from 1110 balcony.

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Large patio balcony with lounge chairs and table.

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The room is loaded with plug outlets and electronic gadgets.

Panels on the walls for lights and drapes allow room environment to be controlled from several different access points.

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Lamps, Reading, Accent – Drapes, Sheers – Bedroom, Hallway

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Touch and hold to turn lights on, touch and hold to dim or turn lights off.

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St. Regis Bal Harbour Dec 26-28, 2012 folio for $2,439.78 room charge after tax for two nights on $1,099 nightly rate and $5.08 for one more cup of coffee before I go.

The TV Check Out button produced a screen stating it did not work for me.

Blogger Disclosure: Two nights room rate at St. Regis Bal Harbour and airfare Monterey, CA to Miami were complimentary of SPG American Express as part of SPG Amex Stars 2012 campaign.

Related posts:

Where and What is Bal Harbour, Florida? – Dec 31, 2012

St. Regis Bal Harbour–The Hotel – Jan 2, 2013

JohnnyJet of JohnnyJet.com and Lucky of One Mile at a Time also stayed at St. Regis Bal Harbour as part of the SPG Amex Stars 2012 campaign and provide descriptions of one and two bedroom suites in their reviews of the St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort.

Johhny Jet –  St. Regis Bal Harbour (November 2012)

One Mile at a TimeReview: St. Regis Bal Harbour (July 23, 2012)

11 Comments

  • D Wonder January 3, 2013

    What do they have for around 99 dollars a night besides parking 🙂

  • colleen January 3, 2013

    Some of these high-tech hotel improvements require guests to posess a BSEE. Is this one? Looks like lotsa gadgets…

  • Jerry January 3, 2013

    Very nice review, Ric! At first glance, I was wondering when did SPG open a new property in Bar Harbor? And it’s freezing right now. Reading through your review, I then realize it was the Bal Harbor near Miami Beach not the Bar Harbor in Maine!

  • Jeff January 3, 2013

    Who pays for this? OMG

  • Ric Garrido January 4, 2013

    @D Wonder – For $100 you get four hours babysitting service.

    @Colleen – I have had practice with electronic master panel at St. Regis San Francisco. The Bal Harbour room had more electronic wall panels. It took a bit of practice to get the lights right and learn how to shut them off or dim. The elevator is the part that is tricky. I walked in at least a dozen times and reached for the lobby floor button inside the elevator. There are no buttons in the elevator. Your key card automatically selects your room floor.

    @Jeff – Wolf Blitzer CNN anchor was the only recognizable guest to me. He also attended the grand opening in March 2012.

  • Charles Clarke January 5, 2013

    Isn’t the butler supposed to adjust your lights for you? 🙂

    I guess if you know guests on a different floor, you are supposed to call them and meet in the lobby. Or if both rooms have couples in them, you could split the keys. Interesting security measure.

  • ed January 6, 2013

    This is really just another infomercial post, isn’t it?

  • ric garrido January 6, 2013

    @ed Of course it is an infomercial since I was given a free airline ticket to Miami and $2,400 in free lodging to experience St. Regis Bal Harbour. I do not think the free trip biased my review.

  • ed January 6, 2013

    @Ric, nothing really wrong with an infomercial. Just that I think this is not really your normal style of hotel–hey, milk it while you can, i guess. I, however, turn to your column more for a discussion of relative values of hotels and not these types. No worries and nothing to change, just one reader’s 2 cents…

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